The following abbreviations are herewith defined, at least some of which are referred to within the following description of the prior art and the present invention.
AFC Automatic Frequency Control
ATC Automatic Time Control
BA BCCH Allocation
BCCH Broadcast Control Channel
BS-PA-MFRMS Base Station Paging Multiframes
BSIC Base Station Identification Code
CCCH Common Control Channel
CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check
DRX Discontinuous Reception
E-UTRA Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
FCCH Frequency Correction Channel
GSM Global System for Mobile Communications
HLR Home Location Register
LA Location Area
MS Mobile Station
MTC Machine Type Communication
NAS Non Access Stratum
RA Routing Area
RSSI Received Signal Strength Indicator
SCH Synchronization Channel
TSC Training Sequence Code
UTRA Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
In a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network today, each registered mobile station (MS) must monitor its own paging group on the paging channel periodically with a periodicity which varies between 0.47 and 2.12 seconds and is set by the parameter BS-PA-MFRMS (see 3GPP TS 44.018 V11.3.0 (2012-11)'s chapter 10.5.2.11—the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein). The length of the paging cycle is set to achieve a balance between the acceptable responsiveness for mobile terminated call set-up procedures and the MS battery lifetime. Today, the MS uses a significant amount of power decoding and processing received information which is not intended for it when it periodically checks for incoming paging messages and performs other idle mode activities. This leads to significant overhead which quickly drains the MS battery especially for MSs which are characterized as machine type communication (MTC) devices.